NAPERVILLE – St. Charles East felt the thrill of winning a 3-1 overtime decision on Thursday.

On Friday, the Saints endured the sting of losing 3-1 in overtime.

Jenna Szczesny recorded a hat trick and freshman goalkeeper Samantha Schmitz made eight saves in her second career start as Barrington edged the Saints in a battle of unbeatens at the Naperville Invitational semifinals at Memorial Stadium.The Fillies (14-0-3) advanced to the tournament championship game for just the second time. They will attempt to win their first title when they face Naperville North, which ended reigning Class 3A state champion New Trier’s 27-game winning streak with a 3-1 win in the other semifinal. The two will meet at noon Saturday at Naperville Central.

Barrington beat Naperville North 1-0 in the season opener, but the Huskies have since reeled off 11 straight wins.“It’s a great opportunity, and I’m super excited,” Schmitz said. “I know everyone on the team is super pumped to get the chance to see where we stack up against the best teams.”Schmitz was playing in place of senior Hannah Luedtke, a four-year starter who suffered a hip pointer early inThursday’s 3-1 quarterfinal win over Naperville Central.

Schmitz did not give up a goal in 69 minutes after relieving Luedtke, and she was solid again against St. Charles East, conceding only Chantel Carranza’s penalty kick which tied the game 1-1 with 17:09 left in regulation time.

“This is our third game in three days and we still have things to work on, but I’m very proud of the effort and the work rate,” Barrington coach Ryan Stengren said. “This is like a state semifinal game and our freshman goalkeeper came in and started in a huge game like this and she did unbelievable. She was very, very cool and poised.”

The Saints (15-1) outshot the Fillies 16-12 and were arguably the more dangerous team, but they failed to put pressure on Schmitz in either of the overtimes after forcing her to make three diving stops in the first 80 minutes.

“My teammates were really supportive,” Schmitz said. ‘Everyone was telling me how well I was going to do and they told me that I’ve been working really hard and that I deserved to play well. They really helped me get over the nervousness and that felt really good.”

Schmitz said she benefitted from playing Thursday and the fact that Luedtke, who Stengren said he could have played had it been a state finals game, was in her ear.

“It definitely helped [playing] yesterday,” Schmitz said. “I played earlier in the year so it really helped to have games under my belt.

“Hannah is a ton of help. She tells me to be confident and believe in yourself. She was super-supportive from the bench.”

Szczesny took care of the offensive effort, burning the Saints on three breakaways. St. Charles East defended set pieces well and gave up nothing in the “half-court” aspect of the game, but the Loyola-bound Szczesny used her speed to take advantage in transition to earn Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match honors.“It’s really special,” Szczesny said of her hat trick. “It wasn’t all me, of course.

“My team was tough, they were hard defending, they stuck their tackles. Against this kind of team you have to go in hard, and we have to keep the ball. I think we can do even better with keeping the ball because there were a lot of turnovers.”

Part of that was due to the extremely physical nature of the game. The officials let a lot of rough play go and the Saints got the short end of the stick when they lost senior Darcy Cunningham to an ankle injury with 25:54 left in the second half.

Cunningham, the team’s assist leader, did not return.

“It looked like she was in pain but she’s a warrior,” St. Charles East coach Paul Jennison said. “She’s a tough girl so we’ll find out hopefully how she is in the next day or so.”

The Saints found out how good Szczesny can be. The senior opened the scoring at the 29:30 mark of the second half when she chested a long pass down the right wing, split a pair of defenders into the box and fired a 12-yard rocket that deflected off the hands of St. Charles East goalie Alison Chesterfield and into the net.

“I didn’t even know what I was thinking,” Szczesny said. “I was hungry for a goal, and I just really wanted to get one in. I felt a defender on my back so I just blasted it. I didn’t try to put it anywhere.”Szczesny added two more goals – one in each of the extra sessions – on similar plays. She gave the Fillies a 2-1 lead with 3:45 to go in the first overtime, taking a long ball over the top from Lauren Pircher and scoring on a breakaway, and capped the scoring with 5:40 remaining in the second overtime on a breakaway off an assist from Michayla Herr.

“We got three balls played, and she outran everyone on their team,” Stengren said. “She was on top of her game today. She left plays on the field yesterday, and I think she was not feeling well and she came back today with a vengeance.”Jennison said Szczesny’s performance was instructive.

“If you give any striker a chance they’re going to put them away, but when you give one of the best players in the state three chances like that you can’t really expect anything less, so for us that’s a little bit of a learning curve,” Jennison said. “We’ve got to understand that when you give 79 ½ minutes hard work and you give up three shots in 30 seconds over the span of a game and it’s going to break you down.”

Thus ended the Saints’ 15-game winning streak, but Jennison has confidence his squad will bounce back.

“I think this is only going to help us,” Jennison said. “We had a similar game last year where we found ourselves doing exactly the same and we lost 4-1, and we regrouped and moved our season forward.“We’re going to take the positives out of this. I said to the girls it’s never a great feeling to lose and we certainly didn’t need to feel what it’s like to lose, but at the same time, now that we have that feeling we want to make sure we never have it again.”

The Saints won’t have much time to dwell on the loss as they have tough games next week against Oswego, Geneva, Metea Valley and St. Charles North.

“We’re definitely one of the best teams out there, and I think this will fire the girls up even more,” Jennison said. “I don’t think we brought our best game tonight, but Barrington is a hard team.“They’re physical, they fought well, so congratulations to them. I wish them all the best tomorrow.”